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| RALLY NEWS NO.5 Grandstand/Douglas/Friday 12.30 UNOFFICIAL LEADERBOARD AFTER STAGE 7 BALLALEIGH Eugene Donnelly and Andreas Mikkelsen are having a huge battle for the lead just point two of a second between them now, while Guy Wilks continues to dominate Group N and the Tesco 99 British Championship. We mentioned on the last Rally News that we had indications that Donnelly had picked too soft a compound tyre and the Tarmac Champion confirmed that here at the TT Grandstand service and said. “Definitely too soft, and with a cut as well, we were getting a lot of movement at the back of the car and the stages are bone dry. I have to hand it to Andreas, he’s driving well. I’m still practising the left foot braking and th4en we had a real laugh on that last stage. There’s about 3 miles of flat out stuff along the coast, a big wide road, but we forgot about a chicane and then it was every foot braking, at the last minute I just got it round on the hand brake. Its all great craic, I really enjoyed this morning but I wasn’t prepared to take chances with the tyres, it could just as easily have rained.” Andreas Mikkelsen said. “We’re not pushing, having a good rhythm, the car is perfect and we had the good tyre choice”. Eamonn Boland in 3rd reported some intercom problems but otherwise OK. Paul Bird has some road penalties carried forward from last night and he is making no headway on the leaderboard at the moment and said. “I’m having a crap rally, the car needs stiffened up and I need to get adjusted to the speed of the tarmac, I’m 2s a mile off the pace.” Having said all that Paul’s time for stage 7 was 4th fastest which can’t be bad. Since the start of the rally Guy Wilks has been talking about steadying his Lancer with his left foot and the car not giving him confidence, and now he has found out what the problem was. When he parked the Lancer before the start of stage 6 and got out for a second to walk around while he waited for the “go” he noticed that the rear lights were on. He thought he had left the side lights on but he hadn’t. It was the brake lights that were shining. Suddenly he twigged what could have been wrong with the car, the transmission accelerate and decelerate mode is controlled by the brake pedal switch that controls the brake lights. The switch was not properly aligned so the box was getting the wrong message most of the time. He was able to adjust it and said it made a great difference. He also had some intercom problems on stage 7 but that didn’t seem to affect his pace. He was still fastest group N. Swedish driver Oscar Svedlund feels that the set up of his Impreza is getting better all the time but he finds the Manx roads fairly different to anything he has tackled before. Gwyndaf Evans commented that he was going hard, that the pace is pretty quick but he’s not going to go mad, that he already has too many grey hairs for that! Mark Higgins reported losing a wee bit of time on stage 6 when he had to reverse at a chicane but otherwise the team is tweaking the car all the time and it is improving. PJ McDermott had quick times through stages 6 and 7 as he settles down to driving his world rally car for the first time on dry roads. Seamus Devine is reportedly stopped somewhere about stage 7 his Subaru WRC suffering fuel pump problems. Paddy White crawled through stage 7 having clouted the big rock at the farmyard with the front wheel of his Focus and deranged the steering. Darren Gass’ C2 is showing signs of battle, the front end damaged, Darren saying that the hand brake wouldn’t work properly and he clouted a load of bales. Rob Swann was really struggling over the last couple when his Impreza tyres went off the boil. Nick Kenny is running under Super Rally rules and his Impreza now needs a gearbox, fortunately Prodrive has a spare and the Geoff Jones team is going to change the unit now. Paul Curphey dropped a couple of places on the leaderboard when he also had hand brake troubles. James Wozencroft has unfortunately retired his Suzuki on the Little London stage. Ironically this is James’ favourite stage of the rally but a driveshaft pulled out at the hairpin and James couldn’t keep going. He hopes to re-join under Super Rally rules and the Suzuki team is going to change Lorna Smith’s Swift’s drive shafts as a precaution. More news later. BRIAN & LIZ PATTERSON www.rallynews.net |
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